Author: LD Smith

Last night I purchased an SSL certificate for levidsmith.com, so my site can now be accessed via https.  It may take a while for search engines to update the links in their engines to use the https URLs.  It was a little more than $100 to have a certificate issued for 2 years.

I’m very familiar with CSRs (certificate signing requests) and installing signed certificates for web servers.  The price for my web certificate was fairly steep, but it did automate the signing and installation process.  Next time I may shop around and see if I can get a better deal.  It’s a fairly simple process, but for public websites you’re pretty much forced to use one of the root certification authorities (registrars) that are defined in the Windows certificate store (Internet Explorer, Opera, Chrome) or the FireFox certificate store.  I highly recommend looking through your certificate store, and removing any trusted root certificates that are questionable (such as CNNIC or the Hong Kong Post Office).

You can see the Windows certificate store by entering certmgr.msc in the run box.  Then open the Trusted Root Certification Authorities folder and select Certificates.  The FireFox certificate store can be found in the Privacy and Security settings under Certificates.

One thing that I had to fix, was updating the site URLs in WordPress under Settings > General.  There were a few other URLs in my functions.php file that had to be updated to use https.  My wiki also no longer worked, so I had to remove one outdated .htaccess file in the wiki directory, and I had to rearrange the rules in the main .htaccess file for my site.

It would be nice if my site automatically did a HTTP 301 redirection when using http, but from what I’ve read the optimal solution is to make a change at the web server configuration level, which I don’t have access.  I may try to do a mod_rewrite change to redirect to https, but I’m just happy that it’s working right now.  Clicking any of the links on my site will automatically transfer to the SSL encryption version.

After doing some research, I found that creating a few mod_rewrite rules is the correct way to do a 301 redirect for the secured version of the site if direct access to the web server configuration files is not available.

This may not make a huge difference since I’m not running a site with financial transactions (buy or selling), but it will add a bit of extra protection whenever logging into WordPress or MediaWiki, especially when logging in using public WiFi.  Having the SSL certificate also displays a lock next to the address in most browsers, and eliminates any browser notifications that my site is unsecure.

I found one more problem with my site.  All of the embedded images still use http:// instead of https://.  This causes a problem, because most browsers will show your site an insecure, if any of the images are not using https.  I found a site that gives the appropriate command to use to update all WordPress images to use https.  I had been doing this manually with a search and replace, but with so many pages, it would take a considerable amount of time to change them all.

UPDATE wp_posts SET `post_content` = REPLACE (`post_content`, ‘src=”http://www.your-site.com‘, ‘src=”https://www.your-site.com‘);

Updated April 13, 2018

This is a compilation video of all of the Ludum Dare games that I’ve created over the past five years. I started with Ludum Dare 26 in April 2013, and I’ve completed 15 straight compo entries since. The video shows gameplay highlights (post-compo version in some cases) along with a portion of the time lapse development.

My thoughts on each of the games.

Amish Brothers – This was my first Unity game and first Ludum Dare.  I made the game about the Amish after hearing about their minimalist lifestyle.

Bomb Squad – This was a more action packed game.  I was able to experiment with the Unity physics engine.  Exploding bombs seemed to go well with the 10 seconds theme.

Tex Oneman (One Gunman) – I wanted to make an educational game.  The gameplay was inspired by the old Number Munchers game.

Archaeology – I wanted to have a game which used heat maps, but it really didn’t turn out how I wanted.  I also experimented with modifying terrains in real time.  The idea for appraising treasure found came from the Pawn Stars show.

Dream World – This was my attempt at making a spooky game.  It was inspired by Little Nemo the Dream Master for the NES, which is where the idea of making it to the bed originated.  It was my first game to use Taron Verve Painter, and my first Stencyl Ludum Dare game.

TV World – A side scrolling shooter inspired by games like R-Type.  The objective was to fight your way through each of the television channels.

Expand-O-Ray – The idea for this game came from the Revenge from Mars pinball machine that had the Big-O-Beam ray that made chickens grow huge.  The game had many references to Georgia Tech, such as the SkilesBot and 1885.  I eventually got the gun attached to the robot’s hand in a post-compo version.

Monster Hotel – A game inspired by the gameplay of Lemmings, but with a monster theme.  Using a minor scale for the music gave it a more creepy feeling.

Mutant Veggie Arena – A first person shooter with a sci-fi theme using mutant vegetables.  This was my first 3D game that used 2D billboarded sprites for the characters.

ShapeQuest – This game started as a Godot engine game, but switched to GameMaker after things weren’t working correctly.  The enemy shape faces were inspired by the profiles in Punch-Out!!.  Some of the enemy movements and attacks were inspired by the Legend of Zelda.

Ancient Adventure – Another game inspired by the Legend of Zelda, but created in 3D with an overhead view.  A lot of issues with the original version were fixed in the post-compo version.

Free the Frog – This was my attempt at making a game with Frogger gameplay in 3D.  The controls differed from my other games, since when a move button was pressed it would set the target square and then pull the player’s character to the destination.  This was also my first time using Blender’s cell fracture plugin.

World Fighter, the Cosmic Warrior – A game inspired by the gameplay of Final Fight.  The movement of the planet and moons were inspired by an enemy in an old RPG, but I can’t remember which one.

Slowbot – I really wanted to give a feeling of running out of power, which was the theme for that Ludum Dare.  The speed, headlight, and motor sound were all affected by how much power the robot has.

Irwin McSpenders – I had the idea for a tax accountant game for years, but I just never made it.  The player’s score would be based on the amount of money and dependents the player collected.  I used real deductible and tax bracket values, which took a considerable amount of time.

 

I added the first powerup to the game, which is the carrot.  By default, the player runs with a velocity of 4f.  When a rabbit picks up a carrot, the speed is doubled to 8f for 5 seconds.  When the speed powerup is enabled, it will display the new particle system that I created around the rabbit.  I made a simple star in Gimp, and then created a particle system with it in Unity with color over time (yellow to blue) and random particle sizes.  This is a nice new mechanic, but it appears to have rendered the timer for the stage pointless, since all of the eggs will now be collected before it ever expires.  The levels seem to go by too fast now, so I may add some obstacles like snakes which bite you or bombs that make you dizzy.  It would also be neat to have a bomb make you drop all of your eggs (I’m thinking like Sonic dropping rings when hit) so it will give the other players a chance to steal eggs away.

I added a title screen, which is nothing out of the ordinary.  I still need to figure out a way to make the copyright text only instantiate on the first time the title screen is loaded, because it has DontDestroyOnLoad, so a new one gets created every time the title screen is loaded.  It isn’t a huge problem, but it becomes more opaque as more copyright texts are overlapped.

I created another overlay, which just outlines the four bunny cameras.  I created this with gimp, by just making a 256×256 image, and selecting all and shrinking by 8 pixels and filled with white.  Then I used the bevel decor filter, to make it look a little 3D.  The I used the Color option to make it blue, red, yellow, and purple for each of the rabbits.  Then I pasted those frames into the main overlay.  I used the grid tool in Gimp to position the squares, but I had to manually fix the y position of the bottom two frames.

After doing some testing, I’ve found that if an egg has a 5x modifier, then whoever picks it up will inevitably win (unless a human player throws the game on purpose after picking it up).  There are a few of things I could do to resolve this.  I could make more than 5x powerup (one for each side so all players have an opportunity to pick it up).  The other option is lower the multiplier.  Another idea is to put carrots on the side that doesn’t have the 5x egg.  However, if I had bombs and other obstacles as I previously mention, then there could be a chance of the rabbit who got the 5x egg to drop it, thus giving the other players a chance to win.  As it is right now, it needs to be fixed, because there really isn’t any point to continue playing after someone picks up the 5x egg.

I added sound effects for the egg pickups and carrot bonus pickup.  The bonus egg sounds just slightly different than the regular egg.  I’ve tweaked it a few times, but I think I need to change it again once more so it does sound more distinct than the regular egg.

Giving the human player the ability to select their rabbit color needs to be added.  I would also like to have multiplayer controls for multiple human players.  I don’t think it should be too hard to add that, because the human flag is just a bool in the Player class.  I just need to modify it so that it handles multiple control mechanisms.

Another thing on my to-do list to dynamically moving the camera so that it zooms in as close a possible, while ensuring that all four rabbits are in the frame.  I’m thinking this will be similar to how the camera in Smash Brothers works.  When the rabbits are spread far apart, then the camera will be zoomed out.  When the rabbits are close together, the camera will be moved in closer.  I also want to have a way for the eggs to stand out more, since they are still a little hard to see when the camera is zoomed all the way out.  I was thinking about adding a light source for each egg, but that will be a serious load for 10 eggs at the same time.  I’m thinking it could work if I set the lighting settings to the lowest possible quality for the light surrounding the eggs.  Alternatively, I could do some sort of particle system, which I think would definitely be appropriate for the bonus eggs to make them stand out.